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Are you interested in writing your own Casual paper Pauper or paper Peasant Primer?

You should first contact the Casual moderator team. Primers are a community resource, and they require a review before they are posted. Don't worry, the review process is largely informal, geared towards ensuring a quality guide (and limiting duplicate work if someone else is already working on that Primer).

Once the review is complete, you'll be given the go ahead to post your new Primer.

Pauper is originally a Magic Online format in which all cards used be at the common rarity in a Magic Online set or product.

This forum however relates to the Casual paper Pauper version of the format meaning that any cards printed as a common on paper are legal cards. Other than that, the usual rules for constructed decks apply,
(a minimum deck size of 60 cards in the main deck, an optional 15-card sideboard, and so on). If a common version of a particular card was ever released in the paper game, any versions of that card
printed at other rarities are also usable in this format.

One major benefit to the Pauper format in general whether online or paper is that it is extremely cheap to get into, most of the paper decks range from $3.00 to about $10.00 depending. Regardless of price all decks in this format can be competitive. This is also a great format to learn the game as-well.

If you have any questions or general posts related to the Pauper Magic Online format, please post them HERE as you will get the best possible answer there rather then in the incorrect forum such as this, thank you.

Here is a short explanation of what Casual paper Peasant is.

Casual paper Peasant is an unofficial format most closely related to that of Pauper, with almost all the same rules being in effect with the exception that up to 5 uncommon cards can
be used in the deck. If a card was printed at any time as an uncommon in the paper version of the game, then changed to a different rarity (such as rare) both versions of the card are legal for use.

actually alot of peasant groups use the ban list here. Also some groups play paper pauper where if it has ever been printed as a common as product or online it's legal. Though to be honest I don't know any uncommons printed in paper that were commons online. but to be fair I've never looked.

actually alot of peasant groups use the ban list here. Also some groups play paper pauper where if it has ever been printed as a common as product or online it's legal. Though to be honest I don't know any uncommons printed in paper that were commons online. but to be fair I've never looked.

I updated the post with the rules and ban list as best I could for Peasant, obviously they will always vary slightly from group to group but I feel this is as close as possible to give the general idea.

"A rich man thinks all other people are rich, and an intelligent man thinks all other people are similarly gifted. Both are always terribly shocked when they discover the truth of the world. You, my dear brother, are a pious man." - Strahd von Zarovich

I've always referred to the rarity as listed in Gatherer whenever there was a dispute.

As do most, but some do not. An example of confusion surrounding C1 print cards would be Maze of Ith and Merchant Scroll. Both cards were printed under the C1 rarity but on Gatherer they are considered different rarities.

As I said though, it depends on what site you use and if at all your play group cares. Does the fact that C1 cards were printed on a common print sheet make them common? Does the fact that their rarity regardless of print sheet make them uncommon? It's up in the air for you to decide and how you apply the rarity structure.

Umm, forgive me but I am a little confused as to why we would need a list of cards printed at the common level on paper but not common online?

Any card printed at common level on paper is usable unless your playgroup has special rules regarding the C1 rarity. Cards such as Hymn to Tourach is usable in paper unless your playgroup chooses to call the C1 rarity uncommon under today's rarity rules which is why I updated the thread regarding that.

Maybe I just completely missed the point of what you meant or something lol.

Umm, forgive me but I am a little confused as to why we would need a list of cards printed at the common level on paper but not common online?

Any card printed at common level on paper is usable unless your playgroup has special rules regarding the C1 rarity. Cards such as Hymn to Tourach is usable in paper unless your playgroup chooses to call the C1 rarity uncommon under today's rarity rules which is why I updated the thread regarding that.

Maybe I just completely missed the point of what you meant or something lol.

It'd just be interesting to see a definitive list of (notable) cards that comprise the potential differences between online and paper pauper (it was looking for such a list that brought me here - what exactly makes paper different from online?). Especially since some of these cards can be quite powerful, if a paper metagame were ever to develop, it's very possible/probable that paper and online metas would look very different. I don't mean to put the burden on you though, just saying it'd be neat to see

Yeah that's the exact kind of list I'm looking for. I've never paid much attention to Pauper or Peasant so I'm not familiar with a lot of the cards that are good in the format that weren't played much during their standard days. A "getting into Pauper Primer" would be awesome and someone with a lot of Pauper experience would be able to steer people in the right direction rather than long, exhaustive Gatherer searches. Just a thought

NOTE: This post is heavily edited.
Last updated: June 2016. Further updates will be posted in the new thread.

Pauper Rarity Breakdown:

I played paper pauper casually years ago, and in trying to catch up with the current metagame/top decks, I found that many pauper resources are geared toward MTGO pauper. Apparently, paper pauper isn't really a sanctioned format, and the pauper ban list doesn't necessarily apply to it. That, along with Wizards complete lack of explanation of the pauper ban list, led me to try creating a deck using some powerful commons not available online (Sinkhole, Hymn to Tourach, Strip Mine) in an effort to show that paper pauper should also have a ban list. Having almost the same card pool, (and the same rules) I see no reason why their ban lists should not also be similar. This led me to researching early Magic sets to determine what classified a common:

Except for Arabian Nights, Antiquities, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Chronicles, Homelands, & Alliances, all other boosters prior to the introduction of mythic rares (even Alpha, if my source is correct) contained 15 cards at a rarity breakdown of 11-3-1. (11 commons, 3 uncommons, & 1 rare per booster) Most of those exceptions, however, only contained 8 cards and had a rarity breakdown of 6-2. (6 commons & 2 uncommons per booster) Alliances had a breakdown of 8-3-1, while Chronicles had a breakdown of 9-3. Legends had a more normal breakdown of 11-3-1.

Because what we now consider rares from these early expansions were all printed on the 'uncommon' sheet, you were not guaranteed one per booster. When these sets were printed, there was no 'rare', only different levels of uncommon... with each booster containing 6 commons and 2 uncommons. Doing some research, here's how those cards were differentiated:

The terms U2, U3, C5 and such represent which sheet the cards were printed on (uncommon or common) and how many appeared on the sheet. (2, 3, or 5, respectively) For most of these sets, both the common and uncommon sheets contained 121 cards each, organized into 11 columns and 11 rows before being cut into individual cards.

As an example, Arabian Nights had 32 U2 cards (32 cards printed twice each on the uncommon sheet) and 19 U3 cards (each printed three times on the uncommon sheet). Each sheet had 121 cards in total, which can be checked with a little math: 32 * 2 = 64, 19 * 3 = 57, and 64 + 57 = 121. The same can be done for the common sheet as well as any other set.

The percentage chance of any card appearing in a booster pack depends on how often that card appears on a sheet as well as how often cards from that sheet appear in a booster. In the case of Arabian Nights, the boosters contained 8 cards: 6 from the common sheet and 2 from the uncommon sheet. A U2 card, which appeared twice on the uncommon sheet, would be found twice per 121 cards (since each uncommon sheet had that many cards). Math shows us that 2/121 = 0.0165, or 1.65%. However, because there were 2 uncommons per booster, that chance is doubled: (2 / 121) * 2 = 0.0331, or 3.31% chance to open any U2 card from an Arabian Nights booster. The same math can be applied to any card in any set, and the results are shown below.

Antiquities (85 total cards)Breakdown: 6-2 | Cards per sheet: 121 | Released: March 1994
20 U1 (rares) ...each 1.65% chance per booster
4 U2 (uncommons)...each 3.31% chance per booster
29 U3 (uncommons) ...each 4.96% chance per booster
2 C1 (uncommons, just as prevalent as U3 cards) ...each 4.96% chance per booster
2 C2* (commons) ...each 9.92% chance per booster
25 C4 ...each 19.83% chance per booster
1 C5^ (Urza's Tower) ...24.8% chance per booster
2 C6^ ...each 29.76% chance per boosterNotes:
* Mishra's Factory are Strip Mine were printed 3 times on the uncommon sheet, but are unique in that they were also printed once on the common sheet, and are thus neither U3 or C1, but are rather combined to be the rarity equivalent of C2 or U6.
^ Urza's Tower, Mine, and Power Plant were all printed with 4 separate art versions. The Tower had 1 of those versions duplicated on the common sheet while the two other cards each had 2 versions duplicated, so Urza's Tower is C5 while the others are C6.

While Gatherer seems to (mostly) display rarities based on which sheet cards were printed on, and ignoring how often they were printed on it, Magiccards.info seems to display rarities based on how rare the cards were, regardless of how they were printed. Personally, the latter makes more sense. It seems the rarity breakdown is as follows:

<= 1.65%: Rare
2.48% - 7.44%: Uncommon
9.09%+: Common

With this as a basis for rarity, whether a card was printed on a specific card sheet or another doesn't matter. Only the card's rarity (as a percentage) affects it's status as common, uncommon, or rare. Unless otherwise noted, this is how I will refer to cards.

Note: Until recently, the practical differences between this system and Gatherer rarities only included ~20 cards total, with Merchant Scroll the only real difference in useful cards. It appears both Strip Mine and Mishra's Factory fall into this category as well, however. See the 'Contestable Cards' section below.

It's important to remember that C1 simply means 'printed on the common sheet 1 time'. For sets with a breakdown of 6-2, (6 cards from the common sheet and 2 from the uncommon sheet) C1 cards had the same rarity as U3 cards, (4.96%) making them uncommons. Most other breakdowns put C1 cards at a lower rarity, making those cards commons.

C1s from Homelands (uncommons)
It seems that Gatherer lists these as commons because they were printed on the 'common' sheet of the print-run, even though they have the same rarity as U3 (uncommon) cards.

C1s with Multiple Versions (commons)
Though each version (different art) is technically uncommon for collecting purposes, these 'cards' are considered to be C2, C3, or C4 depending on how many versions there are, so are common for rarity purposes.

Without sanctioned support, the metagame of paper pauper is difficult to determine. In practice, it may reflect MTGO pauper's metagame, with the exception of commons unavailable there.

MTGO has none of the cards released prior to Mirage, except for those available through the Masters Editions. Additionally, Fifth and Sixth Edition commons and some commons from Conspiracy are not available online.

3. Listed as commons on gatherer, but only appeared as frequently as other uncommons:
These have the same rarity (percentage-wise) as other uncommons from the same sets and were not found more frequently than those uncommons were.

It should be noted that if Merchant Scroll and company are legal, then so too must Maze of Ith and a few other cards (see part 5 below) be legal, as they have the same actual rarity. If this isn't the case (and those cards aren't banned), the pool of legal cards is both inconsistent and incorrect from an all-commons perspective. Mishra's Factory and Strip Mine should also be legal in such a scenario for the same reason, but those should already be legal for othe reasons unrelated to Merchant Scroll.

4. Listed as uncommons on gatherer, but appeared more frequently than other commons:
These have a lower rarity (percentage-wise) than other commons in similar sets and were found more frequently than them. For example, the common Active Volcano from Legends was less common than them. See the rarity breakdown section above for an explanation of this for Antiquities.

5. 'Commons' not recognized as such on gatherer:
These may be considered common on the basis that they were printed on the 'common' sheet of their time, regardless of how frequently they could be found in booster packs.

6. Powerful cards absent from MTGO banlist:
For those who use MTGO's banlist for paper Pauper, a number of additional cards that mostly aren't available as commons on MTGO are strong enough to either be banned as well or at least considered for banning. It's difficult to say whether each of these are too powerful without testing, but this list errs on the side of comprehensiveness - any card that could reasonably be expected to significantly affect MTGO's Pauper metagame is listed. Keep in mind that this part is the most subjective of any in the 'Contestable Cards' section.

June 2016 - Post Maintenance - Strip Mine and Mishra's Factory are now more explicitly shown as commons (yes, Gatherer is incorrect)

A few incorrect points about set history/organization were pointed out and fixed. The main realization of this is that two additional cards from Antiquities were actually common - Mishra's Factory and Strip Mine. The details are mentioned above in the rarity breakdown section, but essentially, whether you follow the percentage-based rarity as described here, or you subscribe to the idea that any card printed on the common sheet is common, these two cards are commons. The only system that doesn't currently list them as commons is Gatherer, probably for the same reason that they were glanced over at first here.

Somewhere in the translation to Gatherer, their rarities were split among each version of art, rather than combined like every other multi-art-version card. Hymn to Tourach, for instance, would not be common if the same was done with it - each of the 4 versions would be considered C1 (uncommon), rather than seen together as C4 (common). In any case, there seems to be no reason for these cards to continue to be considered non-commons, except from a stance that maintains tradition to be more important than rarity.

As these are quite powerful cards and are sure to be contentious in Pauper, they were added to the newly made point #6 of the 'Contestable Cards' section, alongside other similar cards. Gatherer is maintained by Wizards of the Coast, albeit poorly, but it is still the de facto authority for Magic. Simultaneously, Gatherer has mirepresented these cards as uncommons or rares for many years. As always, refer to your local authority or playgroup for a list of banned cards.

Your post is well thought out and in depth, I unfortunately have to get off to work but I will post a more in depth response later.

I have noticed something rather interesting though,

In your math it says that a C1 from Homelands (Merchant Scroll) should in fact be considered an uncommon because of the 4.96% chance to acquire one per booster yet in Gatherer it is regarded as a common card still.

Then we see that a C1 from The Dark (Maze of Ith) should be considered a common also because of the 4.96% chance to acquire one per booster yet in Gatherer it is regarded as an uncommon.

So here we see the same rarity, same chance to get the card yet they are regarded as different rarities. The only difference being that The Dark has 119 cards and Homelands has 140 cards, but with the same percentage in a booster pack.

Thoughts?

(I will be able to respond more after work today but I just wanted to quickly get that out, excellent post by the way.)

Gatherer's inconsistency is one of the reasons I've decided not to use it for checking rarity. They consider the U2 cards from Arabian Nights (3.31% each) as rare, but U2 cards from other sets (also 3.31% each) as uncommon. C1 cards like Merchant Scroll from Homelands (4.96% each) are considered common while others such as Maze of Ith from The Dark and Tor Wauki from Chronicles (both 4.96% each) are considered uncommon by them. I can only guess as to why these discrepancies exist, because there seems to be no reasonable explanation for them. Rarity, by definition, is how frequent something appears, and simply put, the Gatherer system is wholly inadequate in accurately presenting this. I haven't seen any such major irregularities from Magiccards.info yet, so shall use that site for quickly determining rarity.

Gatherer's inconsistency is one of the reasons I've decided not to use it for checking rarity. They consider the U2 cards from Arabian Nights (3.31% each) as rare, but U2 cards from other sets (also 3.31% each) as uncommon. C1 cards like Merchant Scroll from Homelands (4.96% each) are considered common while others such as Maze of Ith from The Dark and Tor Wauki from Chronicles (both 4.96% each) are considered uncommon by them. I can only guess as to why these discrepancies exist, because there seems to be no reasonable explanation for them. Rarity, by definition, is how frequent something appears, and simply put, the Gatherer system is wholly inadequate in accurately presenting this. I haven't seen any such major irregularities from Magiccards.info yet, so shall use that site for quickly determining rarity.

Thank you very much for posting this information, I am going to add a spoiler tag around this and add it to my original rules post crediting you. This is good information and can steer a playgroup one way or another when allowing or not allowing the C1 rarities into play.

I am personally in the favor of once a common or (printed on the common sheet for the older sets) it remains playable in paper Pauper.

I am personally in the favor of once a common or (printed on the common sheet for the older sets) it remains playable in paper Pauper.

Is that code for going by the Gatherer rarities, or would you prefer to have access to all C1 cards, even if Gatherer lists them as uncommon? (like Maze of Ith) What about the U6 cards from Alliances, which are MORE common than other commons from the same set? (C2s each had 14.54% to be opened in a booster, while U6s were at 16.6%)

While Deadly Insect was printed at common in another regular set, the other 4 were only available at common as Alliance U6 cards, (appearing 6 times on the uncommon sheet from Alliances) or from MTGO sets. These cards status as U6 commons probably isn't noted on Magiccards.info because there's not much confusion around them. They're accepted as commons by Gatherer as well, it seems.

I don't mind if you or anyone decides to use Gatherer or another system for determining rarity; I'm just trying to get a better grasp of your viewpoint.

I believe back in the original set days that if the card was printed on the common sheet, regardless of how rare it was it should be a common card. So C1 cards are common even if they are just as rare as an uncommon card.

I also believe that if a card was printed on the uncommon sheets back then, regardless of if it is more common then an actual common it should be considered an uncommon card because of the sheet it was originally printed on.

I am a proponent of "as intended" and printing something on a certain sheet should be deemed as intended to be common or uncommon. I don't agree with some of Gatherers rarities but I can surely understand them.

I believe back in the original set days that if the card was printed on the common sheet, regardless of how rare it was it should be a common card. So C1 cards are common even if they are just as rare as an uncommon card.

I also believe that if a card was printed on the uncommon sheets back then, regardless of if it is more common then an actual common it should be considered an uncommon card because of the sheet it was originally printed on.

I am a proponent of "as intended" and printing something on a certain sheet should be deemed as intended to be common or uncommon. I don't agree with some of Gatherers rarities but I can surely understand them.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Ah, okay. This isn't exactly relevant to pauper, but that would mean that sets without a 'rare' sheet had no rares? Antiquities, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Chronicles, & Homelands each had U1 cards, with each U1 card having a 1.65% chance of appearing in any of those boosters.

Ah, okay. This isn't exactly relevant to pauper, but that would mean that sets without a 'rare' sheet had no rares? Antiquities, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Chronicles, & Homelands each had U1 cards, with each U1 card having a 1.65% chance of appearing in any of those boosters.

Exactly, back in those original set days the "rare" rarity didn't actually exist. It only came into effect when they introduced the new structure, but using the existing structure they then applied it to the old sets which caused this huge debate over whether if C1 was uncommon and U1 was rare.

I just feel they should leave the old sets alone regardless of the percentage chance of acquiring the card or how many were printed.

I have severely updated this thread. It is now streamlined with ONLY what is to be expected when posting in this sub-forum. It now has a more simplistic overview of what these formats pertain to as-well.

All banned card and restricted information has been saved and removed. It will be placed into a new sticky to make things easier for the community to understand so we can eliminate a lot of the overly excessive questions regarding legality.

I have severely updated this thread. It is now streamlined with ONLY what is to be expected when posting in this sub-forum. It now has a more simplistic overview of what these formats pertain to as-well.

All banned card and restricted information has been saved and removed. It will be placed into a new sticky to make things easier for the community to understand so we can eliminate a lot of the overly excessive questions regarding legality.

That's good news! It wasn't obvious that it would be in this thread. It being in a separate sticky sounds more intuitive.